Tamil Nadu man smashes teen’s head with boulder; on the run

COIMBATORE: A day after a 22-year-old man allegedly murdered a 19-year-old woman by smashing her head with a boulder for rejecting his marriage proposal, Salem Rural police on Wednesday formed four special teams to arrest the diploma student. Police said M Roja, of Koodamalai village, was in her second-year of a BA Tamil Literature course at a private college in Attur.

The accused, R Samidurai, of Thandavarayapuram, near Attur, was a third-year diploma student of a college in Chennai. Samidurai, who used to visit his uncle’s house at Koodamalai, allegedly started stalking Roja, daughter of Murugesan, a farm labourer.

On June 1, when Roja was waiting to board a bus to go to college, police said Samidurai approached her and demanded she accept his “love” but she refused. That evening, Roja narrated the incident to her father, who took it up with Samidurai’s uncle Chinnadurai.

Chinnadurai warned his nephew against harassing the girl, police said. On Tuesday evening, Murugesan, his wife, and son had gone to invite relatives for the wedding of their elder daughter Nandhini. Learning that Roja and her sister were alone at home, Samidurai allegedly went there with two friends and insisted she accept his “love”, threatening to kill her if she refused. Even as the two were arguing, police said he poured kerosene on Roja from a can he had brought with him and tried to set her on fire.

Relatives protest demanding arrest
Continued from page 1: When Nandhini tried to intervene, he allegedly doused her with kerosene too and attempted to immolate both women. To escape him, the sisters jumped into a pool of water in the farm. An enraged Samidurai then allegedly slammed a boulder on Roja’s head and fled the spot.

Nandhini rescued her sister and took her to a hospital at Gangavalli but doctors declared her dead, police added. Gangavalli police registered a murder case on Tuesday based on a complaint from the victim's family. Meanwhile, relatives of Roja, who were staging a protest at the Salem government hospital on Wednesday demanding the arrest of Samidurai and his accomplices, accepted her body after authorities promised swift action.

Tried to burn sisters alive
Samidurai allegedly poured kerosene on Roja and her sister Nandhini, and tried to immolate them. However, they jumped into a pool of water in the farm, police said